Vilnius Poker by Ricardas Gavelis

One of the hard-to-quit-books, if what I just said can be considered a category. After all, it should come easy to put an unpromising novel aside. But reading Vilnius Poker developed abruptly into a situation similar to a turbulent relationship. A relationship that fails to work despite the emotional common ground between the two, yet none wants to walk out on the other.

I felt early for the beautifully crafted phrase and, deep into forty pages, the prospect of finishing the reading for this reason alone, appeared to be reasonable. But the constant rambling in circles of Vytautas Vargalis was too irritating. To the point where I didn’t only shut the book loud (it is a hardback), I also slammed the door to the reading room. What was so irking about the novel? I would itemize the lack of novelty, of variety, of progress in any direction. The novel behaves, for a good two hundred pages plus, like the calm, immovable surface of a lake.

A Lithuanian soviet camp survivor, Vytautas might as well have died, as the life he leads after getting out is a life in constant fear of the surroundings. He despises Vilnius and its occupants. Every person or situation frightens him, suspecting that is an act of Theirs meant to exterminate his own persona, physically or just at the moral level. They are everywhere and are kanuking people. The kanuked people are slaves to an oppressive system, gladly obeying uniformity.

Vargalys’s fears are not ill-founded. What he describes as kanuked is what can be spotted with ease amongst any of the contemporary societies. But the desperation this imagined situation seeds into his soul is of unmanageable proportions and leads to emotional turmoil. And who would listen benevolently to the rants of a delusional man, even if, at times, they develop into brilliant monologue.  It took a great amount of determination to read through when I lost the hope that Vytautas will evolve.

Vytautas sees different. He is not right, nor wrong. There is more shown to his eye compare to the eye of anyone around him. His pores are larger, his eyes can differentiate not only colors, but insights and his smell is monstrous. He is paranoid. There exists an overall bad which suffocates Vilnius and the entire humanity and, in the same time, is responsible for his broken life. A bad that Vargalys considers its own personal target.

There are countless interesting passages in Vilnius Poker. The tone, in general, is incriminating, harsh, difficult to swallow even for a non-Lithuanian. Theories like the Vilnius Syndrome, or homo Lithuanicus versus homo Sovieticus spread on many pages and in the detriment of the urban space or it’s urbanites.

Vilnius Poker makes a great, worthy reading, but very wearying in the same time. At times the story becomes so violent, yet in such a natural way that one can consider that Ricardas Gavelis hates its readers.

This is not a love story, as many tend to imply. Of course, there is the intense, destructive Lolita, or the loving Stefa, or Irena, the savior. They are episodes, unlike Vilnius, which is always present. Unlike Them, who never cease to torment Vytauta’s soul.

***

The cover, designed by Milan Bozic, plays an important role in attracting readers.

I admire the Open Letter translation projects.

Notable Vilnius Poker reviews:

Paul Doyle’s review here.

You can go through a preview on Google Books.

Currently reading: The Loss of Sadness and The Black Book of Communism (not a sustained reading; too dark to digest it in one go).

Playing the Victim by Presnyakov Brothers

Preaching avoidance as a properly asserted philosophy of leading an existence is the subject the play seems to circle around.

The practitioner is Valya, a University drop out who often soliloquizes about methods of shirking. The situations he evades this way vary in importance. Some are as trivial as washing the dishes which he avoids by doubling his dinner time using chopsticks he can’t manipulate, or inner threats like entering a pool, a situation he escapes by intentionally forgetting his swimsuit when mandatory, and bragging about how much he wishes to jump into the water. Are they really sure that there is no possibility for him to use the pool?

His parents would rather have him a drug addict. At least they could touch the ‘illness’ that is determining Valya to show so little interest in what they know as normal life. Instead, Valya chooses as a job to play the victim in murder reconstructions.

A point I’d like to touch. While I take notes during reading, and in the end I write my own opinion about the book, I do peek into the reviews others wrote on the same. Not overly surprised, rather slightly taken aback by, is trend in the reviews for Playing the Victim to account Valya’s choice as a job to his fear of death, of which apparently he attempts to vaccinate against by playing the role of the murdered, of the dead. This is a very facile explanation given by the authors themselves in a dialogue at the end of the play. Could be extreme, but it feels like the brothers poked some fun with those lines.

Next on my list, of the same authors, is ‘Let’s kill the referee’. Technically, this is the first on my list, I just didn’t yet manage to find it at the bookstores I buy from.

If I’d recommend the play? Of course. It made me laugh.

You can go through a preview of the play on Google Books.

Currently reading: Vilnius Poker and The Black Book of Communism (not a sustained reading; too dark to digest it in one go)

12:08 East of Bucharest

New Year commenced with a fast, delightful reading. The movie script of ’12:08 East of Bucharest’, by Corneliu Porumboiu (2006).

Sixteen years after the fall of the communism in Romania, a small town local television schedules before Christmas a talk show which intention is to answer the question: Was it there or wasn’t it there? revolution in our town.

The show guests, some obscure small town political figures don’t answer their phones at the set date. Jderescu, the talk show host, a former textile engineer and also the owner of the TV station, improvises by bringing in two relatively random men. Santa Clause and the history teacher. Piscoci, an old man often dressed as Santa during Christmas holidays and Manescu, a soft hearted alcoholic who insists that there was revolution in Vaslui. Himself, along with a handful of friends protested in the town’s square on 22^nd December 1989. And that, before 12:08 o’clock.

The debate will center on the 12:08, the time Ceausescu fled Bucharest. Was it any unrest recorded before 12:08 in Vaslui square, or wasn’t it?  Constantly interrupted by live calls from viewers who will either challenge the events as presented by Manescu, or will ally with the guests, the dialogue is alert, entirely subjective and often slides towards quarrels.
An entertaining analysis of one’s desire for social assertion, for a special place in the events that shaped the society he lives in.

You can download the free movie script in Romanian from   www.liternet.ro

A review in the New York Times.

Excavating Kafka

Excavating Kafka can get very tiresome at times. Never been a follower of the ‘K-myth’. I bought the book because I live in a country where the offer of books in English is so limited that I feel I have exhausted all their readable offer. This one has proved highly overpriced.
I expected unbiased information about Kafka. A biography that will spare me of the emo-writer portrait. What I received was an unexpectedly enthusiastic debunking of Kafka as a legendarily lonely, depressed urbanite. The idea of the emo writer never appealed to me before and will hardly dig roots from now on, as such.

The emotional charge of Excavating Kafka is irritating and superfluous. It feels like the author is fighting against his own deformed perception of Kafka and we pay (a too high price) to watch the show.

The whole study could be summarized in: Kafka was a normal person with a gift for literature.

Later edit. An article on Prague by the same author:  Repression’s Capital, Europe’s Canary

Depression is a flaw in chemistry, not in character

In paradise, social stigma is avoided. In paradise, deep sadness is caused by a chemical imbalance.

Born in Bukovina, deported in Transnistria in 1941, during the pogrom that displaced the entire Jewish community of the region, remaining behind, watching the mass emigration of Jews in Israel after the communist regime took power, self exiled  in USA as a result of constant disagreement and disappointment with the socio-political system, Norman Manea withdraws from the physical space and takes refuge in the Romanian language as existential territory.

Publishes Felix Culpa, an essay that casts doubts on Eliade international brand, an essay that brings him unwanted fame in a Romania that refuses to accept the possibility that Mircea Eliade has been, indeed, associated with the Legionnaire movement ideology. The Iron Guard.

The reaction against the hooligan is aggressive.

The hooligan’s reaction against the Romanian society is equally hostile.

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